Real Estate Website Not Driving Leads? Take It For A Tune Up.

If there’s one quality that far too many agents lack, it’s patience. Especially in regards to their real estate website.

It’s amazing – most agents can wait and wait for those three magical words needed to collect their paycheck (“We’re on record”). But they demand instant gratification for their marketing efforts – no matter how little effort was put into it.

Take your real estate website, for instance. Sure, you spent good money on getting it up and running. You (rightfully) expect it to help you generate leads. It’s not time to freak out when the leads don’t come rolling in overnight, however.

Patience, my friend. These things take time.

They also take putting in some effort to ensure your site is optimized for local searches, populating it with compelling content and promoting it in places where potential clients hang out.

So, how long should it take before I start seeing results on my real estate website?

Some SEO experts claim that it should take about 6 months to start seeing results. “That’s generally accurate but bear in mind this is when you start seeing results, and SEO results grow over time,” cautions Josh Steimle, who covers digital marketing for forbes.com.

But here’s the real kicker:

“Whatever results you’re getting at 6 months should be considerably less than what you’re getting at 12 months.”

In other words, the longer you wait, the better your results will be.

It won’t happen magically

When your aim with your real estate website is to generate real estate leads, dreaming of ranking number one in Google for some generic, common real estate keyword is futile.

Your desired outcome, after all, is lead generation, not search engine rankings. And, yes, there is a difference.

Rankings do matter, “but they’re worthless unless they generate leads or sales,” according to Steimle.

Recently, on Easy Agent Pro’s Facebook page, an agent posted that she was about to give up her EAP real estate website because she didn’t have the time to deal with it. Lo and behold, in rolls a lead that turned into a $900k listing for her.

Naturally, the community was fascinated with her success and the responses came pouring in. One agent claimed to be in “the same boat” as our listing success and is “hoping something clicks for me.”

Hope isn’t a marketing tool

Another agent chimed in that he was going to cancel his site the following week. It turns out he’s only had the site for six months. According to statistics, this is the point where he should just be starting to see results.

He admits in his post that the site is populated with duplicate content, but after we took a look at it, that’s only one of the problems. It doesn’t appear that he’s done anything to optimize his site for local search, for instance.

Assume his market is Anytown, USA. It’s mentioned a grand total of three times on the home page and each instance is his email address: agent@buyinganytown.com.

Dude, your real estate website isn’t working because you’re not working it

So many missed opportunities exist on just the home page alone. There are several places he can slip in local, longtail keywords and that he hasn’t done so is simply mind-boggling.

Get that site optimized

If you tinker with nothing else on your site’s backend, change the title tag. “The title tag alone can impact your search engine rankings,” according to the pros at wordstream.com.

Your site’s title tag lets the search engine and, thus, potential visitors, know what your site is about. Our Anytown agent’s title tag, for instance, currently consists of his name and the name of his brokerage.

Which is doing him no favors

As you can imagine, people searching for “homes for sale in Anytown, USA” (or any of the term’s derivatives) aren’t likely to find this agent’s real estate website unless they type his name into the search engine.

Moz.com recommends the following format for your title tag: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name

They used Widget World as an example of this title tag format at work: 8-foot Green Widgets – Widgets & Tools | Widget World

Feel free to plug local real estate keywords into yours.

And, speaking of local stuff, that list of neighborhoods at the bottom of your home page is worthless if a visitor clicks on them and arrives at a page that has zero information about the neighborhood. No, the IDX for the area isn’t enough.

There’s a lot more we can tell you about why your real estate website isn’t getting you the desired results, but it all starts with you. Your site won’t make you the overnight real estate sensation in your market unless you put in the effort.

Even then, give it about six months.

At least.

Ready for a real estate website that works as hard as you do? Get a LeadSite!

Need even more ideas? Learn from the top 10 real estate websites.

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